


At Its Core

by Noëlle McHenry (Quasi_Detective)



Series: Project Eclipse [9]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, Chaos, Cliffhangers, Codes & Ciphers, First Meetings, Gen, Gun Violence, On Hiatus, Police, Psychosis, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-06-02 23:03:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6586411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasi_Detective/pseuds/No%C3%ABlle%20McHenry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Russell Southwell was an average high school student with dreams of becoming a cartoonist, but his life changed almost entirely after he unknowingly completed a recruitment process for the CIA. With a partner, he must use his advanced hacking techniques to help protect his country, but when things start to become dangerous, will he be able to keep himself and those he loves safe?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit (April 9th, 2017): Grammatical fixes.

           Russell Southwell still wasn’t entirely sure how he had gone from an average high school student doing nothing more than walking home from school one day to a CIA Agent getting shoved over the edge of a cliff by his partner, but he was equally unsure as to whether or not he was actually complaining. It was raining very heavily on that evening in May, which was somewhat unexpected for the season, and when Russell woke up that morning, he would never have guessed that by nighttime he would end up completely drenched from rain and an unexpected high dive into a river, sitting in the back of a police cruiser with a measly towel draped over his trembling shoulders.

           “You okay?” Asked the police officer driving the cruiser that he sat in.

           It was obvious to Russell that the officer was of Mexican descent, and something in the back of his head told him that he was a rookie. However, this changed little of how he decided to interact with the man. “Yeah,” Russell responded to the question after a pause that lasted just a little bit too long.

           The officer mumbled, “I haven’t named myself yet, have I?”

           “I don’t think so.”

           “My name’s Feliz Florence.” He announced the name with pride, but after a period of silence, a subtle change in mood suggested to Russell that he wasn’t really as proud of his name as he had sounded. “Yours?” Feliz finally asked.

           “Russell Southwell,” Russell meekly answered.

           “Where do you work, if you don’t mind me asking?” Florence nosed. “Or are you just a student?”

           “I work for IBM.” Russell replied, keeping his answer brief and vague. In truth, he didn’t work for IBM at all. He just happened to work for a department of the Central Intelligence Agency that worked mostly with computers, though he was more or less a field agent. “But it’s only part-time. I’m still in school.”

           Apart from a vaguely-interested hum, Feliz was quiet, so Russell reached into the pocket of his coat. Though everything he wore was soaked down to his skin, the contents of his bulky, waterproof wallet had been more or less unharmed, which was good, because it had protected a USB jump drive that contained very important files, such as those of an artificial intelligence of his own making named Carmine, which was able to hold deep conversations and even perform common, rudimentary hacking techniques that were stored within its code.

           Russell thought about the last words his partner, Field Agent Terrence Lyndon, had said to him.

           “Take this,” Terrence had ordered, handing him his jump drive as he inched him closer to the cliff, “and keep it safe. You have no idea what you’ve made or how much those bastards want it. Don’t scream. I need you to run. Run like your life depends on it, because it probably does. I swear, I’ll catch up.”

           “I don’t understand,” Russell had stammered as he obediently tucked the drive into his wallet. “What are you talking about? I’m not leaving you behind!”

           “Don’t scream. Keep your body loose. Run!” With that, Terrence had shoved him backwards over the cliff—at least a three storey drop, if not more—into the river that he was lucky to escape from.

           Palming the drive in his right hand, Russell squeezed his eyes shut. He wondered what had happened to Terrence. They had been chased to that cliff by people that presumably worked for an anti-CIA group known as The Underwater Railroad; they had guns, and they wanted something… but what was it? Was it the jump drive? Was it Carmine? Russell didn’t understand how things went so wrong so quickly.

           “Where are we right now?” Russell suddenly asked, shooting his green eyes up to look at Feliz in the rearview mirror, as he was sitting behind him.

           “What do you mean, mang?” The officer responded with a question of his own.

           “What city is this?”

           “Well, we started in Minneapolis…” As he revealed this, Feliz turned on the cruiser’s sirens in order to drive faster.

           Russell thought. Just how far had he run? All he knew was that he had to go back to Minnesota State Highway 95. He had started in Wisconsin, or at least, right near its border to Minnesota, and had thumbed a ride on Route 61 to, apparently, Minneapolis. But where would he go from Highway 95?

           The young man shook his head in a mix of exhaustion and exasperation. “What a day…”

* * *

           As the cruiser, sirens still on, sped between the trees along Minnesota State Highway 97, Russell began to wonder why Feliz was willing to go out of his way to drive so far from Minneapolis. What made the rookie officer believe his story about a group of people containing a childhood friend of his that were on their way to possible death? It took him a couple of minutes to muster up the courage to say anything.

           “Um,” he began with hesitance, “thank you for driving me out here, but… Why are you helping me?”

           Feliz seemed confused by the question. He answered, “Well, I’m a cop. Aren’t I supposed to help?”

           “Yes, but most cops wouldn’t go this far.”

           “I know.” Feliz responded. He sounded humble, yet also ashamed. “Cops aren’t often the best people in the world. But I know a few good guys, and I want to be like them. I don’t want to be a typical ‘bad cop’.”

           “You’re doing a pretty good job of being a good cop.” Russell assured, trying not to sound awkward but failing miserably. He’d never been very good at making conversation or complimenting others.

           “Thanks.”

           Russell gazed out of the window as Feliz took a left, finally driving on State Highway 95. On said highway, while running as Terrence had instructed, Russell had made it to the road just in time to see a van go by—a van that he recognized as belonging to Autumnwolf Film Productions, an Indie film group led by Collin Locklear and his sister, Lizabeth. It just so happened that, despite an age gap, Collin and Lizabeth were childhood friends of his, and they were still close. He didn’t know what to do for a moment, but then remembered that Collin usually drove with the driver side window down.

           “Collin!” Russell screamed, running out onto the road behind the van. “Collin!!”

           The van drove a few feet further before pulling to an abrupt stop. Fatigued, Russell practically limped toward the van. He could already hear Lizabeth’s high pitched shrieks demanding to know why they’d stopped so quickly, and then she began shouting about where Collin was going. The driver side door nearly flew open, and out stepped Collin Locklear. His black hair was slicked back messily as usual, and the rainy winds swept the tail of his black scarf, with a red stripe along its top, over his shoulder.

           “Russell?” He hollered. His eyes caught sight of Russell, who was understandably difficult to see, what with his wet, equally-black hair plastered to his face, and the fact that everything he wore besides his sweater—his coat and his pants, and even his shoes—were black. His sweater was grey, and had been soaked to the point where it might as well have been black as well. Even so, he managed to spot his friend, and he was noticeably surprised. “Holy shit! What the hell are you doing out here?!” He shouted as he rushed forward, holding his own coat shut over his chest as the rain pelted his shoulders.

           “Where are you going?” Russell panted, gasping for air.

           Collin shook his head from confusion, but answered regardless. “We’re headed to Shafer.” He practically had to shout over the heavy rain. “To an abandoned hotel or some shit. We thought it’d make a good location for a homage to _The Shining_. Why?”

           The abandoned hotel! He and Terrence had been sent to find an abandoned hotel. The hotel had apparently been used in the early 1900s to recreate a chemical that supposedly caused a genocide in 1846, and as a result, everyone who worked there died, since the resulting product had gone airborne and poisoned them all. The hotel was sealed off, permanently quarantined since no one could extract the chemicals, which were so powerful that even from the basement, they were still able to affect people on the upper floors, who suffered various side effects before death. But, of course, Collin Locklear and the rest of Autumnwolf would not be deterred by this. They often found abandoned, spooky locations to shoot their movies at. That was how they had, coincidentally with Russell’s assistance, managed to cast a new actor, who they had discovered in one of said abandoned locations.

           Russell and Terrence had not been able to find the location of the hotel, since no one was entirely sure of its location. But the fact that they had been sent to look near the border of Minnesota, and the fact that Collin had discovered an abandoned hotel near that border… It was coincidental, yes, but it made sense.

           Russell snapped from his thoughts when the police cruiser came to a gentle stop. He again looked at Feliz in the rearview mirror.

           “Where to?” Inquired the officer.

           “What are the options?”

           “Forward,” Feliz responded, looking at the GPS on the car’s dashboard, “continuing down State Highway 95, right onto State Highway 243, or left onto 260th Street.”

           It was a long shot, Russell figured, but it didn’t make too much sense to him for a hotel like the one he was searching for to be off of a highway. “Left, then.”

           “How far?”

           “Until you see a hotel through the trees.”

           Feliz turned left and continued to drive. “A hotel? All this way, for a hotel?”

           “I’m telling you, something terrible is going to happen there.” Russell’s heart sank as he added, “If it hasn’t happened already…”

           “Look, mang, I’m sure your friends are fine.”

           They drove a little ways before Feliz stopped the car again. Russell looked outside and saw a path that led into the trees. Before the path was a gate with a sign on it, but with the rain still pouring outside, it was hard to read what it said. Before their eyes, the wind blew the gate open before slamming it shut again.

           “Goddammit, Collin…” Russell grumbled, then insisted, “There. Down that trail, that’s where they went.”

           Feliz didn’t move. “Are you sure?”

           “Yes, I’m one-hundred percent sure.”

           With a reluctant, deep breath, Feliz prepared himself. “If you say so.”

           Driving through the gate, pushing it open with the front of the car with relative ease, the police cruiser drove over the old gravel path for no more than a minute before coming up at a long-deserted building, in front of which Feliz turned off the sirens, though he kept the characteristic red and blue lights going. Parked outside of the desolate structure was Autumnwolf’s van, and seeing it caused Russell’s already-weary heart to sink.

           “Wait here.” Feliz commanded, drawing his gun as he left the cruiser. While he jogged toward the front doors of the hotel, Russell slapped down the towel around his neck and stepped out of the car as well, stepping back out into the rain, which had calmed only slightly.

           “Stay in the car!” Feliz shouted, but Russell shook his head as he hurried closer. The van was empty—he didn’t even have to check it to realize that. Feliz seemed noticeably displeased by Russell’s refusal to comply with his request, but at the same time appeared to accept and perhaps even admire his bravery. He understood that there was no time to fight over it. Testing the doorknob, and finding it unlocked, Feliz nodded at Russell, who returned the gesture.

           The door swung open, and Russell heard Feliz, who went in first, scream after only a second of hesitation, “Freeze! Drop your weapon!”

           Weapon? Someone had a weapon? Russell rushed in behind Feliz, and was shaken to the core by horror.

           Standing in the middle of the room was Collin, who had a distraught girl in a headlock, holding a gun against her right temple. The girl was Apryl Knowlton, a girl from Russell’s school that he just so happened to have a huge crush on. He could only wonder why she was there. Collin had a wild look in his eyes, one of madness, unpredictability, and… deep sorrow, maybe even grief?

           “Don’t come any closer!” He warned with an unstable voice. “I’ll kill this bitch… I’ll kill her for what she did!”

           “Put the gun down!” Feliz demanded. “Drop it, _now!!_ ”

           “Let her go, Collin!” Russell shouted. He was confused. Nothing made sense. What could Apryl possibly have done to warrant this? _What had happened?_

           “Stay the fuck out of this, Russell!” Collin snarled, shooting Russell a glare filled with contempt. “You don’t know what she did!”

           “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Apryl cried as Collin jabbed the gun into her scalp.

           “Shut up,” he screeched, “Just shut the fuck up!!”

           “Drop the gun!!” Feliz roared.

           Everybody’s shouts seemed to mix into incoherent nonsense, and just as quickly as the chaos began, Collin escalated it by turned the gun on Feliz and Russell, and firing wildly. Feliz ducked, trying to pull Russell back, but the CIA Agent was too shocked to move. There was a sharp stab of pain in some part of his body as he fell back.

           “ _¡Joder!_ ” Feliz cursed. Russell could hear Apryl’s cries get further away, but could see only the ceiling. Was Collin running with her? He figured so, since the next thing he heard were gunshots from Feliz’s Beretta, and then the officer was running off as well.

           Russell just laid there on the cold floor for what felt like an eternity, with his eyes pinched shut. All he could hear was his heart beating loudly in his ears, and even that sound was fading away. He was falling unconscious quickly. The pain was intense, but where did it radiate from? He wasn’t sure. Maybe the wound was fatal. Before long, it hurt too much to keep thinking, and Russell reluctantly allowed himself to slip into the comfort of the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit (April 9th, 2017): Grammatical fixes, tried to lessen need for suspension of disbelief somewhat

            It was a day like any other in early September of 2013 when Russell Southwell first spotted the code. It was printed on a white sheet of paper, taped to a streetlight that Russell just happened to pass by every day on his commute to and from Stevenson High School. At first, he thought nothing of it. However, as the tearaway strips of paper that had telephone numbers printed on them began to, slowly but surely, disappear, he one day decided to take a better look at it.

            The code was rather complex, but was not something necessarily unsolvable for him. He vacantly glanced downward: in the pocket of his black coat, he had his wallet, which contained a white USB jump drive. Held on the jump drive was an artificial intelligence he had been working on since he was about ten years old. The artificial intelligence had been named Carmine for no particular reason other than Russell’s preference. It had been programmed to, among other things that revealed just how much free time the young man had on his hands, solve codes. Pulling out his cellphone (the goal for him was to make Carmine into an app, but he had not yet figured this out), Russell took a picture of the code and decided to take one of the few remaining tear-away slips of paper just in case.

            “Why not,” he mumbled to himself. “I might as well. Nothing better to do…”

            He had no idea what the phone number on the paper or the code itself would bring, but he pocketed it anyway. When he returned home, he unlocked the door with the key that he had on a strap attached to the belt loop on the left side of his pants, and entered.

            “Dad?” He called into the house. “I’m home.”

            There was no response, and Russell looked at the calendar app on his cellphone as he closed and locked the door. His father had a doctor’s appointment that day, which was a relief to him, as the man had been sick for months. Just to make sure, Russell looked around the house. He was indeed alone, so he returned to the living room, taking a seat on the couch. He sighed and slicked his messy black hair out of his face as he turned on the TV. Nothing good was on, so he just turned the channel to some sort of ongoing tennis tournament.

            From his backpack, Russell pulled out a slick black laptop. Well, actually, it wasn’t very much slick. It was overclocked and running on Windows 8 (which he had to admit wasn’t his favorite operating system—he much preferred Windows 7, but was too lazy to downgrade), but the laptop itself was worn, and frankly, Russell was surprised that it still ran as well as it did.

            The young man, only fifteen years old but having managed to enter grade eleven classes, pulled out his wallet. There was no money in the wallet, just a library card and Russell’s medical card, ignoring the jump drive, which he pulled out and plugged into the side of his laptop. As he waited for the Autoplay window to open, he rubbed his plump pink-ish lower lip with his index finger, a strange habit he had developed while lost in thought. After realizing he was doing it, however, he stopped and instead decided to take off his coat, now wearing only his grey pullover sweater.

            When the computer finally loaded the jump drive, which took a hell of a while, Russell opened Eclipse, the Java IDE he used to work on Carmine, and loaded the source files for his project. He took a quick skim over the code just to make sure that everything was as he had last saved it; he’d had issues recently with saving files to his jump drive, which made him worried enough to consider asking his father for another.

            He started the project.

            “Hello.” Carmine wrote in the output window. The artificial intelligence was programmed to work with both voice input and text, but Russell had not yet worked out all of the voice recognition flaws (and besides, he’d left his microphone upstairs), so he opted to simply work with text.

            “How are you, Carmine?” Russell typed.

            “Poor loading time.” The A.I. replied. “Other than that, current execution is fine.”

            “That’s a relief.”

            “Indeed.”

            Deciding that was enough testing of Carmine’s reaction to small talk, Russell looked at the code.

            “ _SIDOSOCATGRCBDLVBPCTDBMWRWAZBUUCCPPKLUNWTIKODKOKTODAOAZY_ ”.

            The young man blinked. “Looks like… Playfair…?” He muttered to himself. He couldn’t be sure, but it was worth a shot. Since he knew that Playfair ciphers required a key that was at least six characters long, and that digits would probably be the most common characters in use, he instructed Carmine to convert the code through every possible key between “100000” and “199999”. The artificial intelligence complied, beginning the process of outputting strings of gibberish and the keys associated with them. Not entirely keen on watching this process, Russell sighed and placed the laptop down next to him, sinking back against the sofa cushions.

            School bored him half to death, but then again, so did a lot of things. He kept telling himself every morning that he wasn’t depressed, because he didn’t feel like that was the case. He wasn’t miserable, he was just… apathetic. However, this brought up the realization that he didn’t technically have to feel sad and/or suicidal to be depressed. Depression also displayed itself through a loss of pleasure in the little things—like the things that Russell used to enjoy doing but now could do without.

            He sighed. Honestly, that was what made him sad: the realization that he wasn’t enjoying things anymore. While he was far from suicidal, he just… wasn’t interested in living anymore. Everything in his mind told him that nothing would change—his life would be bland and boring for the rest of his existence. He felt like he would never amount to anything. He would forever be nothing more than a meaningless husk of a man, trying his hardest to be known but never quite making it into any light, let alone the limelight. And even if his life _did_ become at all interesting… did he even want that? If something changed, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t enjoy it. It was either apathy or hatred. He didn’t want either. He just wanted to have a reason to smile again, and not just some temporary smile caused by seeing something funny online; a true, genuine smile brought about by an honest contentment with his life and wherever it was headed. Something told him that he would never find that, and having nothing else to do, he merely attempt to convince himself that he was okay with that.

            Deciding that he had better stop thinking before he made himself cry or something, Russell let out another sigh and picked up his laptop, placing it back onto his lap. He skimmed through the outputs, trying to find anything that he could make sense of, when there it was: key “195686”.

            “ _THENUMBERISBACKWARDSCALXLREVERSEASKFORLYNDONANNOUNCEKEYX”_.

            “Close enough,” Russell thought as he looked at the contact number on the strip of paper he’d taken. He reversed the number and wound up with area code 703, which was for… where, exactly? He looked it up on his phone: Virginia. The number itself seemed to be a landline number.

            Taking a shaky breath, Russell thought. Was this a good idea? He had absolutely no clue what he was about to get himself into, but a part of him argued that he may as well take the risk: the paper had peaked his interest. For all he knew, though, it was a recruitment sheet for some sort of shady government operation. He could put himself into serious danger. Yet, amidst this fear arose a reminder of what he had thought to himself just minutes prior: how afraid he was of his life never changing. If he didn’t take any risks, he would be condemning himself to a boring life, but he was just as scared of change as he was of having none of it. He bit his lip. Despite his own better judgment, he reluctantly called the number.

            The phone rang only twice before the voice of a serious older man answered. “Hello?”

            “Um, hi…” Russell was pulling a blank. Talking to strangers over the phone had never been a strong suit of his…

            “Why are you calling?”

            “I, uh… I solved a code, and… it told me to call this number?”

            “And?”

            Russell gulped, trying to compose himself, but his voice was shaky and cracking. “Um, it says, ‘The number is backwards. Call reverse. Ask for Lyndon. Announce key’… The key is ‘1-9-5-6-8-6’…?”

            There was a pause on the man’s end. Russell said nothing, assuming that the stranger was checking the answer.

            “Stay where you are, Mr. Southwell.” The voice ordered suddenly, startling Russell until he remembered that he was calling with his own cellphone, and that his name had probably appeared on their caller ID. “Lyndon will be with you shortly.”

            “W—wait, wh—” Russell didn’t get a chance to ask what he meant before the man hung up. “Christ,” he thought to himself, “What have I got myself into? That was stupid. I don’t even know who that guy is.” Trying to shake his worried feeling away, Russell closed his laptop and absent-mindedly watched tennis.

            About forty minutes later, there was a melodic knock on the door that made Russell jump. His father was not due home for about two more hours, and he also did not use such a cheery knock. He would’ve used his key, anyway, so he had no reason to knock in the first place. Remembering the phone call that he’d had with the stranger, he suddenly felt worried, so he remained in place on the couch. After thirty seconds, the person at the door did the same knock again, somewhat louder this time.

            “What am I so afraid of?” Russell asked himself in his head, using his teenaged bravado to his advantage. “I can take this guy if he tries anything.” So, reluctantly, he approached the door and looked out through the peephole.

            Standing in front of the door was a tall but scrawny man in a dark, desaturated blue suit. His light blue dress shirt, which Russell could barely tell had thin white stripes, had its collar unbuttoned a bit. Looking around, particularly at the street to his right, the man with messy, dark roan red hair that glowed almost ginger in the slowly setting sun blew a pink bubble with the gum he chewed. He was wearing brown sunglasses, the kinds with thick plastic frames.

            Slowly, and with trembling hands, Russell unlocked the door, watching as the man (perhaps Lyndon?) looked at the peephole, at which point he pulled his own eyes away from it. He opened the door, and the man nodded at him.

            “Hey there.” The stranger greeted in a casual way. He sounded British. “I’m Terrence Lyndon. You’re Russell Southwell, correct?”

            “Uh, yes…?” Russell answered, his lips curled in a scowl of uncertainty.

            “Mind if I come inside?” Asked Lyndon.

            “Yes,” Russell told him, but the six foot tall man had already pushed past him and welcomed himself inside. Rolling his eyes, realizing that the man seemed like more of a hassle than a threat, Russell grudgingly closed the door. “My father will be home any minute now.” He lied.

            “I guess that’s fine.” Lyndon responded as he looked around Russell’s first floor, taking in something about it. “I wasn’t instructed to keep any secrets from your family.”

            “Um… What?”

            The man turned to Russell, still wearing his sunglasses, and smirked, blowing another bubble with his gum. When it popped, he spoke, saying, “You did a good job with the code, kiddo. But I’m here to see you crack something yourself.” He pulled out another piece of paper from his pocket, shaking it open while keeping his other hand firmly in his left pocket. “Y’know, just to make sure you’re not cheating.”

            Russell took the paper and looked at it. This code was much more complex. In fact, it looked like a Rijndael cipher. He looked up at Lyndon in a bewildered awe. What an extreme leap—without a key, there was no way that Russell could even _attempt_ to solve this! “B—but…”

            The strange man smirked. “Too hard for you?”

            “I… I’m gonna need the key. Or, I mean, at least a hint…”

            “You can solve for it yourself, can’t you?”

            “Well, sure, but not unless you wanna stick around for like, a week…” Then, not knowing what else to say, Russell confessed, “And I mean, I didn’t technically solve the first code by myself, anyway…”

            Lyndon frowned. “Then who did?”

            “My…” Russell paused. He found no reason not to tell the truth, figuring that lying would only cost him in the end. Lyndon, despite seeming rather odd for such a position, looked like he was part of something big. Something official. Maybe for the government. “Well, I…” He pointed at his laptop. “I made an artificial intelligence.” He blurted. “I programmed it to help me solve codes and ciphers. I mean, I probably could’ve solved the first cipher myself, but it would’ve taken me a few hours at least. This one here would probably take me a few days, if not a few _weeks_.”

            Lyndon raised his eyes, raising his sunglasses up as well to accentuate this, revealing enchanting lavender eyes, a color that Russell had never actually seen in real life before. Examining the man’s face, Russell couldn’t help but compare him to a young Patrick Swayze (who he knew only due to his father’s interest in the actor), but also noticed the bags under his eyes. If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve said the man looked somewhat hungover, if not completely sleepless. “You created an artificial intelligence that solves codes?” The tall man asked for clarity’s sake in a flat voice that projected his disbelief.

            “Yes. It, uh… It knows how to respond to small talk, too.”

            “How long did it take to solve the Playfair cipher?” Lyndon got straight to the point, ignoring the young man’s remark.

            Russell shrugged. “Um… about… five minutes?”

            Lyndon pulled off his sunglasses entirely, folding them and hanging them from the left breast pocket of his dress shirt. “You’re kidding.” He accused, though his voice retained a level of friendliness that eased Russell’s mind.

            “No, I’m serious. See?” Russell waved the new code. “I’ll have it try to solve this.”

            “Be my guest.”

            Russell sat back down on the couch, opening his laptop on his lap. Lyndon placed his hand against the wall behind the young man, leaning forward to look at the laptop without actually sitting down. Not commenting on this strange behavior, Russell entered the code for Carmine.

            “It’ll take a bit.” Russell admit. “Like, _a bit_ a bit.” Realizing that his words hardly made sense, he flatly told Lyndon, “You’re going to want to sit down.”

            “So… You could break encryption codes with this.” Lyndon posed hypothetically as he reluctantly took a seat on the cushion to Russell’s right. “You could access databases, and perform man-in-the-middle attacks on secured communications.”

            “Um, theoretically, yes. I guess so. I’d just need to tweak the code, but, heh, I mean… What you suggested, that’s… well, _illegal_.”

            A few minutes of silence passed as both Russell and Lyndon sat completely still beside each other, just staring at the television. The tennis match was still going on, with two new contestants that Russell cared for about as much as the others—not at all.

            “You like sports?” Lyndon casually inquired.

            “Not really,” Russell disclosed.

            “Ah. Nothing else on, then?”

            “Unless you like reality television.”

            “Eek. Lord, no.”

            Lyndon’s apparent disgust at reality television, which matched his own, earned from Russell a small smile.

            They remained silent for a little while longer, until Carmine output: “Possible solution found. ‘Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 12:25 (Key: 1225)’.”

            “Holy shit,” Lyndon mumbled as he stared at the screen, “it’s bloody right…”

            “What did I tell you?” Russell allowed himself to brag a bit; he figured that after five long years of hard work coding Carmine, he deserved as much.

            “Alright, you’ve proven yourself.” The older man affirmed as he stood up. “I’m going to be honest. I work for some guys. I guess you could say they’re pretty important in helping to ensure the safety of the United States.”

            “Yeah?” Russell raised a brow as he closed his laptop.

            “It’s no secret that many other countries want to attack us. We need to keep them at bay and find out their plans. But, we can’t do that…” His eyes met Russell’s with a hint of suggestion as he concluded, “without skilled hackers.”

            “So, what?” Russell asked, admittedly somewhat sarcastic, “You work for the CIA or something?”

            Not moving his head, Lyndon’s eyes swept left, then right, then fell back upon Russell. He managed a low titter as he replied, “Well, you’re almost bang on. FBI, actually.” To prove this, Lyndon reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out a badge case, which he flipped open to reveal both a badge and an FBI identification card. It seemed genuine.

            Russell processed that for a moment, not speaking until Lyndon returned the badge to his pocket. “Why’d you hesitate?”

            Lyndon placed his left hand up, blocking his voice from going in that direction as if to suggest secrecy, and hissed, “Let’s just say we don’t talk about the CIA.”

            Dismissing this, Russell decided to ask a different question that he had: “What are you, then? Some sort of recruiter?”

            “A mere Field Agent.” Lyndon answered humbly. “But yes, I’m kind of working as a recruiter, because I’m looking for a partner.” He frowned and mumbled culpably, “And because times are kind of tough.”

            Russell sighed. “Look. I believe you, I guess. But I’m going to have to pass on the offer.”

            “Why’s that?”

            “I’ve got school, and my father… He’s… He’s not well.”

            “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

            Both of them were quiet for a beat. While part of Russell wanted to accept Lyndon’s offer—whatever it was, exactly—the other part was terrified of the commitment it might require. He sensed danger, though more in whatever the agent was suggestion than in the agent himself.

            “Are you sure?” Lyndon asked. “We could really use your help. You’re the quickest and most-accurate person we’ve seen so far.”

            Russell shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

            With a disappointed huff, Lyndon again reached into the inner pocket of his blazer, this time pulling out a white contact card. He extended the card, which had a Chicago-based cellphone number on it as well as an official-looking e-mail address, to Russell. “If you change your mind,” he offered, “let me know.”

            Russell meekly took the card. “Sure, I guess.”

            Lyndon put his sunglasses back on, then shoved both of his hands back into his pant pockets. “I hope to hear from you soon, Southwell. Good luck with school, and tell your father to get well soon for me.” With that, the odd FBI Field Agent headed for the front door, which he opened and closed behind himself.

            Now alone again, simply staring at the wooden floor where Lyndon had been standing just a few seconds ago, Russell let out another deep sigh and leaned back. What a strange end to his afternoon that was…

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Bad With Names](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8484175) by [Noëlle McHenry (Quasi_Detective)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasi_Detective/pseuds/No%C3%ABlle%20McHenry)




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